Childhood fantasies

There could never have been much doubt I was gay; not even at a pre-teen age. As a young boy with our first television (our family came late to television ownership) I grew up in the 1950s, in love with, or rather dreaming that I was, Donna Reed.

Each week we sat down to watch her television show, The Donna Reed Show, the stereotypical gentle family comedy, where one or other of the parents knew best and where each weekly problem was solved in the half hour. How idyllic it all seemed to me. How wonderfully WASPish it was; just as I wished my life and family would be.

I imagined myself dancing down the stairs in my pretty apron ready for the day's adventures just as Donna Reed did without fail.

Looking back in the following opening credits it is interesting to notice the subtle changes over the years.



Of course as I approached teenage years I no longer wanted to be Ms Reed. I now had a very keen eye on Paul Petersen, whose recent photo in the link betrays how gorgeous he looked to me as a child actor.

Little did I realise in those years that Ms Reed had won an Academy Award for her acting in 'From Here to Eternity', one of the great films of the 1950s for her portrayal of a....ssshhhh...prostitute. Then again, in those days I wouldn't have known what a prostitute was. Ironically in that role she was matched with Montgomery Clift, himself a gay man in real life.

Montgomery Clift & Donna Reed